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‘New voice of Formula 1′ makes big title prediction

It has not been an easy journey for Bruno Senna since he first attempted to follow in the footsteps of his late uncle, the legendary Ayrton.

Indeed, he has since described his experience of trying to compete in the sport while living in the shadow of the celebrated Brazilian as "near impossible".

The family burden has been extremely heavy for Bruno and his time as a driver in F1 was rudely truncated after only three seasons.

But now he is embarking upon a new venture and one which he hopes will help him to move on and into more comfortable ground.

He is now putting his experiences as a driver behind him and is ready to pick up the microphone as a key pundit and analyst for Sky Sports' coverage of the upcoming season.

"Maybe there was always more expectation of me than of others," he reflected as he became the surprise addition to Sky's team.

"And yet of all the people coming up behind me, I would say 80-90 per cent of them had less impressive results than I did during my very short career before joining Formula One.

"People in Brazil expect me to perform even under tough conditions – even when they are near impossible, as in 2012. That has been the case for my whole career.

"They look at me and think that I should be as comfortable as Ayrton in the car, but they forget that with him, it was about his experience as well as his talent. He knew how to put that together for results."

He added: "There were many difficulties throughout my time in F1. I hadn’t done half of the age-race championships and so I always had the sense, being up against the best racing drivers in the world, that I was always one step behind them, that I didn’t have the second gear to consolidate everything I had learnt.

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"I kept on pushing, and I have shown in every other championship besides F1 that I can be competitive in any car. It is just a question of having the right equipment."

He was never helped by the expectation heaped upon him after Ayrton said in 1993: "If you think I’m fast, wait until you see my nephew Bruno."

It was a pressure he could never quite accept; a burden too much to bear on the pressure cauldron of the F1 circuit.